This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Eddy Says
Eddy Says: This week Oi have mostly been blown away by MC Rut
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 24 November 2008
It’s not an MC, there are no rappers and this is definitely not hip hop.
Middle Class Rut, affectionately known by some as MC Rut, have enjoyed some spot plays on The Remix over the past couple of months. I knew they were from Sacramento. I’ve described them, on air, as a cross between Jane’s Addiction and Deftones. I honestly thought they were a MASSIVE West Coast band, that I had sneaked in a play before they went on the daytime playlist of Xfm and the rest of the world… and I thought this huuuuge-sounding record, ‘Busy Being Born’ was played by at least four large, tattooed men with low slung guitars.
Erm, I should have checked.
I went to The Water Rats – for those who don’t know, a little Kings Cross pub with a tiny stage in its back room (I saw Weezer play there YEARS ago, I think it may have been their first London gig, mid nineties, just before ‘Sweater Song’ came out here) – and there witnessed the awesomness of MCR… both of them… yes, a TWO PIECE. One insane drummer, who sings, too, and one singer guitarist.
If Shychild were a gold sovereign, MCR are the flipside of the same coin, and my God they rock. But they have a sort of dance sensibility about some songs. Hypnotic grooves and harmonied vocals… the drummer hits the kit like it raped his entire family, but then is also capable of a lovely, grace-note smattered drum pattern that sounds like ‘Miss You’ by Blink 182 (Travis is a great drummer and so is this guy).
The gig was constantly on the edge of oblivion. They had two power failures in the first song. The drummer broke his kick pedal halfway through and semi trashed his whole kit, which seemed wobbly from abuse and needed constant adjustment, while he was playing. All of the breakdowns were handled in a totally confident, non-neurotic, charming, entertaining way, and actually added to the show somehow. My God, they are loud. If I didn’t have earplugs in, I probably would have lost all bowel control. They play like they’re playing to thousands, even though there were barely 50 people in there.
I came out thinking “I was there, and in a year 500 people will say they were, too”. I’d love to remix one of their tracks, just so I can support them more on the show, and I’m letting you know so you might consider seeing them when they come back to the UK. You’d have to be quite open minded, this is not dance music but, my word, it is entertaining, and sounds like a breath of fresh air. They have a 7″ out on KIDS, I’d buy it now and hang onto it like it was gold plated.
Listen to Middle Class Rut on MySpace here
X eddy
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
